Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 6.djvu/386

 342 THE BA'iTLE OF INKERMAN. CHAP, this young French battalion was one more than ' commonly difficult. From out of their column 3d Period, formation they undertook nothing less than to effect a deployment in the face of a powerful enemy now only a few paces distant. The bat- rho couitat. talion passed bravely through that trying part of the ordeal, and meanwhile was able to exert a formidable power of destruction, unhampered as yet apparently by any approaching mistrust. The file-firing executed by the ranks already in front was excellent, and 3^et hardly more sure than that of the soldiery in the deploying companies, who steadily delivered tlieir shots one after another as each man ranged into line. The calm prowess of the French during those moments of file-firing is proved by the havoc they wrought. Under the fire which poured down from their extended and still extending front the Russians fell in numbers so great — some dropping together in knots, and even in clumps — that before many moments the shattered face of the column had sunk down into an almost continuous bank of prostrate soldiery. With the bodies of their slaughtered and wounded comrades thus loi)ped down before it in heaps, the unstricken part of the column disclosed a rare fortitude, and, though staggering, did not yet break ; but it is evident that a body thus appal- lingly maimed and stopped dead in its path of attack could hardly be in a state for resisting an instant charge with the bayonet. A respite, however, was given. Strange as the interniptiou nui}' seem where the two opposed